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Tuesday, 10 April 2012

Four key members of the Associate Parliamentary Group for Health have financial links to companies involved in private healthcare

The Associate Parliamentary
Health Group (APHG) was launched in November 2001 and according to its website
was set up with the intention to provide: ‘information with balance and
impartiality, on local as well as national matters, and is recognised as one of
the preferred sources of information on health in Parliament.’

However research
conducted by Social Investigations has thrown the self-proclaimed ‘impartiality’
into question as it has been revealed three of the key parliamentary officers involved
in the group, have financial links to companies involved in private healthcare.

The Chair of the APGH is
Baroness Cumberlege, who has been exposed on this blog as having placed her
company into a position where it can make money out of the development of the
new GP Commissioning groups. The Alliance
the Baroness’s company joined, is led by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has
sealed several contracts involved in the development of the new GP led groups. Her company is involved in running training programmes, but also covers the topic of ‘Politics, Power
and Persuasion’, in a tailored two-day
programme which includes topics such as: ‘Managing the markets,
the challenges of commissioning’, ‘who’s who’, and ‘brokering deals with other
independent sector providers’. The last programme is delivered by the Baroness
herself.

Next up is Lord Hunt of Kings Heath who acts as the groups’ treasurer and has received payment from Baroness Cumberlege for work as a
trainer and consultant, making up one of five
Peers and four MPs who have worked
for her company. Lord Harris of Haringey who is
listed as an APHG advisor, has also been remunerated by Cumberlege Connections
for ‘occasional participation in training events.’ In addition, he is a senior
adviser to business services giant KPMG, who are one of the ‘approved
providers’, winning contracts for the new commissioning groups.

Last but by no means
least is Mark Simmonds, who acts as Co-chair to Baroness Cumberlege on the
parliamentary group. The Conservative MP for Boston and Skegness is paid
£50,000 a year for 10 hours a month as a strategic advisor to Circle Health, the first firm to win control of an NHS hospital. The
former shadow minister for health recently had to apologise to the House of
Commons, for ‘inadvertently’
failing to declare his interest when talking in favour of the NHS reforms.
Circle have connections to our ‘’person of the year’’ Andrew Lansley having recruited
a former aide to the health secretary as head of communications. Christina
Lineen spent two years working for Lansley prior to moving to Circle.

In addition to the parliamentarian’s
interests in such an important and supposedly independent organisation, the
APGH has a list of external Associate members from the private healthcare
world.

The amount of members is
capped at 26 and they pay an annual subscription fee to be part of the health
group on a first come, first serve basis. This according to the manger of the parliamentary group Ella Jackson, being the fairest and 'most transparent' way to operate the group's membership system.' That however, is where the transparency ends. I asked Ela Jackson whether the group keeps minutes?

Here's what she said: 'The APHG holds
records of all its meetings in strict accordance with the Rules on All-Party
Groups. In fact, the APHG goes further than that. Official rules dictate that
each All-Party Group must keep sufficient records to enable it to prove that
the group meets at least twice a year, whereas the APHG ensures that it
audio-records every meeting it holds.

However, because
meetings are held under Chatham House Rules the group does not produce written
minutes.'

The Chatham House
rule was created back in 1927 and has since been refined
in 1992 and 2002, and exists according to the Chatham House website; ‘to
allow people to speak as individuals, and to express views that may not be
those of their organisations, and therefore it encourages free discussion.’ It
continues: ‘People usually feel more relaxed if they don't have to worry about
their reputation or the implications if they are publicly quoted.’

This lack of transparency
applies to the list of attendees too, where it is forbidden to mention who attended.

Ms Jackson explained: 'It’s vital that parliamentarians and other speakers are able to speak
freely in an open and frank exchange, without fear of having their thoughts
reported out of context.'

In amongst the list of companies involved in the group are: Alliance boots, BT,
Astrazeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer; who are all heavily linked to the
Lords, and in some cases MPs.

Astrazeneca has 9 Lords with
financial links to its company. GlaxoSmithKline has 17 Lords with shares in its
company and Alliance Boots has a former chairman in Lord Blyth, and former MP Patricia
Hewitt took a consultancy job with them 7 months after standing down as an MP.

So here we are
again, another government policy group, which is immersed in connections to
private healthcare, and whose discussions are held in private. The Lords and MPs largely appear to be representing
corporations more so than the public. It is time for change.